Kael woke to silence.
It was not the silence of Settlement Seven. It was different and alien. Settlement Seven's was made of the screams and monster howls that formed a constant backdrop to existence. It was also not the manufactured quiet of the inner districts, where the wealthy paid for soundproofing and pretended the world wasn't ending just outside their walls.
It was absolute silence. It felt alien. It was not peaceful nor empty, but fundamentally wrong.
He kept blinking and rubbing his eyes. And yet nothing happened. It was real. He was transported to a different world.
This place wasn't home. Wasn't even close. Every instinct in his body was screaming it.
The sky was wrong. Two suns—one amber, one pale blue—hung in a sky streaked with colors he didn't have names for. The air tasted different. Cleaner, somehow, despite the ruins surrounding him.
Ruins. His heart lurched as he pushed himself upright, hands scraping against broken stone. The architecture was familiar yet alien—twisted metal and shattered concrete, but the designs were off. Too elegant. Too deliberate. Like someone had taken human buildings and filtered them through a fever dream.
"What the hell..." His voice sounded too loud in the emptiness. Too loud, it was deafening.
[WELCOME TO THE NEXUS REALM]
The words appeared directly in his vision, glowing with that same nameless light from before. Not floating in the air, but carved into his perception itself. Kael scrambled backward, his boot catching on rubble. He fell hard, pain lancing up his spine.
[INITIALIZATION COMPLETE]
[HOST: KAEL MORRIGAN]
[ANALYZING PHYSICAL CONDITION...]
[ANALYSIS COMPLETE]
[UNIQUE ABILITY DETECTED]
A window materialized before him—translucent, shimmering like heat haze. It looked like the hunter tablets back home, the ones that measured awakened potential and ranked power levels. But this was different. Only Kael could see this.
***
[STATUS]
Name: Kael Morrigan
Level: 1
Class: None
HP: 60/60 (Regen: 1.5 HP/min)
--
Stats:
Vitality: 6
Strength: 5
Agility: 4
Intelligence: 3
Available Points: 0
--
RESISTANCES:
None
--
UNIQUE ABILITY: [Survivor's Undying Will]
-Vitality growth multiplied by the current level (every level up).
-Damage taken builds permanent resistance. Capped at 50%
-Death will provide 1 hp for a while. Can be used once per level. Cannot be stacked.
-HP regeneration scales with Vitality--for every 4 Vitality points will be 1 hp regen.
-Stat distribution handled automatically at level up
[A body that refuses to break. A will that refuses to die.]
***
Kael stared at the display, his mind struggling to process. This was insane. This was impossible. Hunters didn't get status windows—they just were powerful, their bodies transformed by the Awakening Trial into something more than human. There were no numbers, no neat little boxes quantifying strength.
And yet.
He focused on the Vitality stat, and information flooded his mind like someone had uploaded it directly into his brain. Vitality governed health, stamina, resistance to damage, recovery speed. At 6, he was pathetically weak—a normal human averaged 10, and most hunters started at 20 or higher.
Strength: 5. Below average. Explained why hauling crates always left him gasping.
Agility: 4. Also below average. He'd never been fast.
Intelligence: 3. That one stung more than it should have.
But that Unique Ability—Survivor's Undying Will. Vitality growth multiplied by current level. At level 1, that meant nothing—he'd gain Vitality at normal rates. But at level 10? Every point would become 10. At level 100?
The implications made his head spin.
A sound cut through his thoughts—a chittering, wet clicking that raised every hair on his body. Kael's head snapped toward the noise. Between two collapsed structures, something moved. Low to the ground. Skittering.
His breath caught.
The creature emerged into the light of the twin suns, and Kael's stomach turned. It was roughly the size of a large dog, but that's where any similarity to anything natural ended. Six legs, jointed at wrong angles. A carapace of mottled green and brown that looked like diseased flesh stretched over chitin. Its head—if it could be called that—was mostly mouth. Concentric rings of teeth that spiraled inward like a lamprey's maw.
[SCUTTLER - LEVEL 2]
-A bottom-feeder of the Nexus Realm. Weak individually but vicious when cornered.
Level 2. One level above him. And Kael had exactly zero combat experience beyond watching hunters fight from a safe distance while he cowered behind supply crates.
The Scuttler's eyeless head swiveled toward him, and Kael realized with mounting horror that he had no weapon. His extraction knife was gone—lost somewhere between his world and this one. He had nothing but his porter's harness and the clothes on his back.
The creature charged.
Kael threw himself sideways, his shoulder slamming into broken stone. The Scuttler's teeth snapped shut where his leg had been a heartbeat before, the sound like a bear trap closing. He scrambled backward on his hands and knees, boots slipping on loose rubble.
Move, move, MOVE!
His hand closed around something—a length of steel bar, rusted and bent but solid. He swung it wildly as the Scuttler lunged again. The metal connected with its carapace with a hollow thunk, and the creature recoiled, chittering in what might have been pain or anger.
[DAMAGE DEALT: 3]
The notification flashed in his vision, nearly making him miss the Scuttler's next attack. Its front legs lashed out, razor-sharp tips scoring across his forearm. Pain exploded through his nerves—bright, hot, immediate.
[HP: 60/60 → 52/60]
[SLASHING DAMAGE RECEIVED]
[ANALYZING DAMAGE TYPE...]
[SLASHING RESISTANCE: 0% → 2%]
Eight points of damage. One hit had taken more than ten percent of his total health. Kael's mind raced even as terror threatened to swallow rational thought. If it hit him like that seven more times, he'd die. Seven hits. That was all it would take.
The Scuttler circled him, its movements jerky and predatory. Kael kept the steel bar between them, his arm burning where the creature had cut him. Blood soaked through his sleeve, warm and sticky.
He'd seen hunters fight. He'd watched them dance through combat with impossible grace, their awakened bodies moving faster than the eye could follow. He'd seen them tear through monsters like paper.
He was not a hunter.
He was a porter. Weak. Unawakened. Expendable.
The Scuttler feinted left, and Kael flinched right—exactly what it wanted. The creature's back legs launched it forward like a spring, and suddenly it was on him. Weight crashed into his chest, driving him backward. His head cracked against stone, stars exploding across his vision.
[HP: 52/60 → 45/60]
The Scuttler's mouth opened impossibly wide, those rings of teeth spiraling, reaching for his face. Kael shoved the steel bar between them, metal scraping against enamel. The creature bit down, and the steel bar bent under the pressure. His arms shook with the effort of keeping that mouth away from his throat.
I'm going to die. I'm going to die here and Alice and Elise will wait for me and I'll never come back and they'll starve or get reassigned to someone worse and—
No.
Something primal ignited in Kael's chest. Not courage—he was too terrified for that. Not strength—his muscles were already failing. But desperation. Pure, distilled, animal desperation. The will to not die!
His sisters needed him.
He couldn't die here.
He wouldn't!
Kael planted his feet against the Scuttler's underside and pushed. His legs burned, muscles screaming. The creature was heavier than it looked, all dense chitin and writhing limbs. But terror gave him strength he didn't know he had. The Scuttler lifted—just an inch, just enough.
He twisted, throwing his whole body to the side. The creature tumbled off him, legs scrabbling for purchase. Kael rolled away, came up on his knees, and swung the bent steel bar with everything he had left.
he metal caught the Scuttler across what passed for its face. The impact jolted up Kael's arms. The creature shrieked—a sound like metal scraping glass—and stumbled backward.
"DIE!"
[DAMAGE DEALT: 5]
[CRITICAL HIT!]
Kael didn't give it time to recover. He lunged forward, bringing the steel bar down again. And again. And again. His vision had narrowed to a tunnel. The creature. The steel bar. The brutal necessity of survival.
The Scuttler's carapace cracked. blood—thick and greenish-black—spurted from the wound. The creature's movements became erratic, less coordinated.
"Die! Die! DIE!" Each word ripped from his throat between gasps, barely human anymore. The steel bar rose and fell, rose and fell—his arms screaming, his lungs burning, but he couldn't stop. Warm spray hit his face with each impact, thick droplets spattering across his cheeks and forehead. His clothes were already soaked, the greenish-black ichor seeping through fabric, sticking to his skin.
[DAMAGE DEALT: 4]
[DAMAGE DEALT: 3]
[DAMAGE DEALT: 6]
The Scuttler collapsed, legs curling inward. Its mouth opened and closed weakly, teeth clicking together one final time before it went still.
[SCUTTLER DEFEATED]
[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 20]
[LEVEL UP!]
Kael's legs gave out. He hit the ground hard beside the corpse, the steel bar slipping from fingers that had gone numb. His breath came in sharp, shallow gasps—the kind you take when you're trying not to throw up, trying not to fall apart.
It didn't work.
A sound clawed its way up from somewhere deep in his chest. Not quite a sob. Not quite a scream. Just—broken. His whole body shook, and he couldn't tell anymore where the adrenaline crash ended and the rest of it began.
He'd almost died. That thing had been on top of him, its teeth inches from his throat, and he'd almost—
His stomach lurched. He twisted to the side and retched, nothing coming up but bile. His hands pressed against the rubble, smearing that wrong greenish-black blood across the stone. It was everywhere. On his hands. Soaking through his sleeves. He could feel it drying sticky on his face, taste something foul and metallic on his tongue.
He'd killed it. With his own hands. Felt every impact as the steel bar came down, heard the crack of chitin splitting, the wet sounds that came after.
"I'm sorry." The words tumbled out, barely more than a whisper. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm—"
Who was he even talking to? The creature? God? His sisters, who were waiting for him in a world he couldn't reach?
His vision swam. Tears cut hot tracks through the blood on his cheeks, and he didn't bother wiping them away. What was the point? He was here. Trapped in some alien hell with two suns in the sky and monsters that wanted to eat him. Alice and Elise were back home, probably already wondering where he was, and he couldn't—he couldn't—
The shaking got worse. His teeth chattered. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the rational part that had kept him alive this long whispered that he needed to move, needed to find shelter, needed to stop falling apart.
But his body wouldn't listen.
The tears wouldn't stop either.
The status window blinked into existence like nothing had happened. Like he hadn't just killed something. Like he wasn't sitting here covered in gore and falling to pieces. Just numbers. Just data.
***
[LEVEL UP!]
Level 1 → Level 2
Vitality: 6 → 8 (+2)
Strength: 5 → 6 (+1)
Agility: 4 → 5 (+1)
Intelligence: 3 → 4 (+1)
--Vitality gains 2 based stats multiplied by current level gained. First multiplier 1, excluding level 1.
--Stat allocation will be automatic
--
HP: 45/60 → 80/80 (HP Regen: 2 HP/min) [FULLY RESTORED]
Available Points: 0
***